Foster on Film

Private detective Lew Harper (Paul Newman) is hired by rich invalid Mrs. Sampson (Lauren Bacall) to find her degenerate and neurotic husband who disappeared a day ago. Helping, or hindering, his investigation is Sampson’s spoiled daughter Miranda (Pamela Tiffin), the family pilot (Robert Wagner), and Sampson’s lawyer (Arthur Hill). The trail passes by an aging

Philip Monrell (Robert Montgomery) is the charming son of a wealthy steel family and good friends with the good natured playboy Ward Andrews (George Sanders). Well, that’s how it appears. Actually Philip is a paranoid psychopath who is jealous of Ward and recently escaped from an insane asylum. The pair visits Philip’s sickly mother who

Jeff (Robert Mitchum) runs a gas station in a small town and is dating the local good girl. His life is interrupted when a gangster’s hit-man shows up to tell him that his boss, Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas), wants to see him. Jeff used to be a detective, hired by Whit to find his mistress,

Private detective Philip Marlowe (Dick Powell) is hired by dim-witted, hulking, ex-con Moose (Mike Mazurki) to find “his Velma.” He’s also hired for a one night body guard job that ends up with his client dead, the killing somehow connected to a stolen jade necklace belonging to the Grayle family: ingénue daughter Ann (Anne Shirley),

Capt. Rip Murdock (Humphrey Bogart) and his buddy Sgt Johnny Drake (William Prince) are headed to Washington DC to receive a pair of medals when Johnny jumps a different train to avoid the publicity. Rip follows and quickly discovers Johnny had enlisted under a false name as he was on the run from a murderer

Jed Towers (Richard Widmark) is an angry, crude man, dumped by Lynn, his hotel singer girlfriend (Anne Bancroft). Nell Forbes (Marilyn Monroe) is the troubled—very troubled—niece of Eddie, the elevator operator (Elisha Cook Jr.). Eddie arranges for Nell to babysit a wealthy couple’s daughter at the hotel as they attend a banquet downstairs. Jed hits

A pair of killers (Charles McGraw, William Conrad) show up in a small town diner with plans to kill the Swede (Burt Lancaster). Things are delayed as they terrorize the three people there, but eventually they get their man, who does not resist. Jim Reardon (Edmond O’Brien), an insurance investigator, takes the case because the

A Few Thoughts Carmen: “You’re not very tall are you? Marlowe “Well, I try to be.” There, less than three minutes into the film, and it’s clear that something special is going on. This is no cheap detective thriller. This is art. Normally, a review would include some general plot synopsis at this point, but

Frank Bigelow (Edmond O’Brien) is a rather bland businessman with commitment issues and a very clingy girlfriend, Paula (Pamela Britton)—really, really clingy. He heads to San Francisco for a sudden vacation. After a night of wild partying, he discovers he’s been poisoned by a “luminous” substance and has between a day and a week to

Johnny Morrison (Alan Ladd) returns from the war with his two buddies (William Bendix & Hugh Beaumont), one of whom has a brain injury. His sleazy drunken wife, Helen (Doris Dowling) has been carrying on an open affair with Eddie Harwood (Howard Da Silva) a wealthy criminal, and admits to killing their child in a

Two soldiers murder Samuels (Sam Levene), a Jewish man. While police captain Finlay (Robert Young) is in the apartment of the victim, Montgomery (Robert Ryan), show up. He’s one of a group of recently returned servicemen that had met the victim the night before. His story sets the police after Mitchell (George Cooper), the most

What is often missed about Double Indemnity is that it is a comedy, a dark, twisted, comedy.  The world of most Film Noirs is an extreme version of our world–everything has been kicked up a notch. Billy Wilder just took it up an additional “notch.”  It’s a parody of Film Noir made while Film Noir was